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The Institute for Legislative Action

As the lobbying arm of NRA, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is dedicated to any issue affecting firearms ownership and use. ILA works to defeat restrictive gun control legislation, to pass pro-gun reform legislation, and to educate the public about the facts concerning gun ownership.

You Can't Afford to Sit Out This Fight

December 31st, 2013

Chris W. Cox

Editorial in The Daily Caller

Every January, most state
legislators return to their respective capitals to start a new
legislative session. For gun owners, this means we have to be ready to
make our voices heard in support of our Second Amendment rights.

Last
year, we faced unprecedented attacks at every level. But thanks to the
hard work and dedication of millions of NRA members, we beat back most
of these attacks. Anti-gun legislation was defeated in the United States
Senate in April, as well as throughout the year in many state
legislatures.

That truth is very important for gun owners to
remember. Even in the face of the most strident anti-gun attacks from
the media, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, former New
York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a host of other radical opponents
of liberty, we won far more battles than we lost. In addition, pro-gun
bills were passed in 30 states, with many jurisdictions enacting
multiple pro-gun measures.

Unfortunately, we did not win all our
battles. But even as the NRA and gun owners were attacked and maligned
across the country, only nine states passed laws restricting our
freedoms. In each of those states, NRA was in the trenches with our
members fighting to stop those bills. And in the coming year we will
continue to fight to undo the damage wherever possible.

We know
who the leaders of the anti-gun movement are at the national level. They
include Obama and Biden, along with Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.,
and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. And of course there is former Mayor
Bloomberg. Now that he is out of office, Bloomberg has even more time to
use his billions to influence elections and the legislative process in
Congress and every state capital. He has made it clear that he will
spend whatever it takes to win passage of laws that strip away our
rights. And he has a lot of local anti-gun politicians lined up to do
his bidding. It is vital that NRA members know who is coming after our
rights in the state legislatures and what they are trying to accomplish.
That is the only way they can be stopped.

Much of the
anti-gunners’ focus will continue to be on so-called “universal”
background checks—their code for criminalizing many private firearm
transfers and creating the foundation for firearm registries. That
proposal was defeated at the federal level last April, but they will try
again, and they are looking at state legislatures to take similar
action. We expect to see efforts in many states to pass expansions of
background check laws. Even in states that have generally pro-gun
legislatures, gun owners should be ready to fight against these bills.

The
fact is, expanded background checks wouldn’t have prevented the
tragedies we’ve seen committed by madmen. Nor will they deter criminals
from committing the violence that occurs in our cities every day. We
know this, and so do our opponents.

The opposition’s zeal for
this concept instead derives from the fact that background checks are a
major step toward the creation of a national gun registry. The
Department of Justice itself has admitted that without registration,
expanded checks are meaningless and unenforceable. Passage of these laws
in more states sets the stage to achieve the goal of gun registration.

We
need solutions that actually work. We need serious changes to the way
we identify and treat the mentally ill. We need to take steps to protect
our children in their schools. And we need to redouble our efforts to
get violent criminals off our streets. The NRA Institute for Legislative
Action (NRA-ILA) will continue to urge our friends to focus their
efforts in these areas, including action at the state level to make sure
that the records used by the current background check system are
complete and accurate.

More gun control laws won’t achieve any of
these goals. And we will never see any improvements in these areas as
long as anti-gun politicians are fixated on blaming gun owners rather
than finding real solutions.

While criminalizing the transfer of a
firearm to a friend or relative without government permission may be
their top priority, banning the mythic semi-automatic “assault weapon”
is also high on the anti-gun agenda. As with expanded background checks,
their goal in this regard is not crime control but a long-term
prohibition strategy. The idea is to divide gun owners against each
other and condition the public to view some guns as “bad,” while
continually expanding the types of firearms that fit under that
umbrella.

We saw a few states last year move to enact gun bans and
magazine restrictions. We know that anti-gun politicians will try to
spread these laws to new states. NRA-ILA is working in every state to
arm our pro-gun allies with the information they need to push back
against the gun banners.

It is also important to note that such
laws have had severe economic consequences in states like New York and
Colorado. Firearm-related businesses are moving elsewhere. Perhaps the
potential loss of jobs will give pause to some on-the-fence legislators
in other states.

Of further concern are unilateral actions
President Obama might take to attack the Second Amendment. Now that
Secretary of State John Kerry has signed the United Nations Arms Trade
Treaty, we have to make sure that it is never ratified by the current,
or a future, Senate. Equally important is the threat of regulatory and
executive actions to implement parts of the treaty that the Obama
administration believes they can legally pursue without Senate action.
NRA-ILA will monitor the actions in this area very closely and keep all
our members informed of any effort to side-step the Constitution and
implement any part of the treaty without Senate ratification.

In
the face of these threats, our job is to get involved and stay involved.
All gun owners should continue to contact their senators and
congressmen. Both our allies and our opponents need to know that there
are tens of millions of gun owners who will not stand idly by while our
rights are dismantled.

Last September, gun owners in Colorado sent
a resounding message by recalling two senators who voted for the
anti-gun bills in that state. NRA members in every state can reinforce
that message by letting their lawmakers know that they, too, could face
similar career consequences unless they protect our rights. It is also
important that NRA members let pro-gun legislators know that gun owners
will stand with them as long as they keep up the fight to preserve our
liberties.

And while we will be working hard in the states, we
cannot forget that what our opponents really want are new federal gun
control laws. We can count on Sen. Feinstein to try to pass her
semi-auto ban again, and there are still more than 50 votes in the U.S.
Senate to mandate “universal” background checks.

But there is also
a bright side to a new legislative season. We have the opportunity to
work with our allies to improve our laws and strengthen our rights. In
many states, NRA-ILA will be working to pass reforms to carry laws and
make them fairer and less restrictive. NRA-ILA will also work to expand
Right-to-Carry reciprocity between the states, with a goal of passing
universal recognition statutes nationwide, as well as federal
Right-to-Carry reciprocity legislation. Other pro-rights reforms such as
castle doctrine protections will be pursued in states where those
measures have not yet been enacted. And NRA-ILA will fight to roll back
the new laws that were passed last year in places such as Maryland, New
York and Colorado. These efforts will be undertaken not just in the
legislatures, but also in the courts.

As NRA-ILA has for decades,
we will also continue to fight to protect our great American hunting
heritage. This will include protecting the use of traditional ammunition
from attacks by radical environmental and animal “rights” groups. NRA
is also working with our allies to eliminate the antiquated restrictions
on Sunday hunting that are on the books in 10 eastern states. Finding
time to hunt is getting more and more difficult, and the Sunday hunting
bans are a serious obstacle for many sportsmen and for bringing youth
still attending school into our hunting tradition.

The other thing
hunters need is places to hunt. NRA-ILA will continue to support
reforms that make public land, whether federal, state or local, open to
hunters wherever possible. Additionally, we are working to expand
programs that encourage private landowners to make their lands available
to sportsmen.

These are just some of the threats and
opportunities we face. With the help of millions of NRA members, NRA-ILA
will be on the front line in every state to fight to protect our rights
this coming year. As the legislative sessions advance, NRA-ILA will
keep every gun owner informed at www.nraila.org about any action in the legislatures or in Congress that threatens our liberties.

No
gun owner can afford to sit out this fight. If you belong to the NRA,
consider extending your membership and enlisting friends and family
members to join you. If you are not a member, know that the need for
voices and numbers in our ranks has never been greater. The NRA’s real
strength and influence comes not from media-concocted Washington power
brokers but from millions of ordinary, everyday Americans devoted to the
concept of freedom and all pulling in the same direction to achieve it.

Together, we will prevail in 2014 and beyond, but we can’t do it without you.